The EGTC Hospital of Cerdanya is the first cross-border hospital in Europe. Located in the municipality of Puigcerdà, in Spain, a few meters from the French border, it aims at providing healthcare services on both sides of the French-Spanish border in a mountainous area where people had to drive 1h30 to reach the closest hospital in Perpignan, in France.
About 33.000 people live permanently in the Cerdanya valley, in the Pyrenees – a figure that can be quadrupled in winter with the arrival of tourists during the ski season. The lack of access to healthcare in this mountainous area led in 2003 the Catalonian and French Ministries of Health to discuss the creation of a cross-border hospital and to formalise the creation of the European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation – Hospital of Cerdanya in 2010.
The Spanish Cerdanya valley and the French Capcir region, are real medical wastelands with very poor health services offered to local population except from rural family doctors. Nowadays, the competence area of Cerdanya Hospital covers 1340 km² and includes 53 municipalities in total, of which 17 in Cerdanya valley and 36 in the Capcir region.
Find out in our good practice how this mountain hospital works and how the administrative barriers linked to its cross-border aspect have been resolved.
